Message for May 26, 2002
by Pastor Glenn Layne
1 Samuel 31:11-13


The Big Idea:
When a nation mourns, it can turn to God and be renewed and delivered from its enemies.


First Memorial Day since the Attack on America

Back in the 80s, I recall a young man from Virginia who got involved in a rather interesting court battle. As you know, we haven’t had a military draft in this country since the early 70s (I know; just a few months older and I might have been drafted). But since then every young man of 18 has been required to register with the Selective Service in the event of the re-institution of the draft.

But this young man refused, and with the backing of his parents, took the issue to court. In a statement on the steps of the federal courthouse in Richmond, he stated his primary reason for refusing to register. It’s not that he’s a pacifist, he said, it just that (quote) "there’s nothing so important to die for."

Tell that to 38 year old Sargent Gene A. Vance, Jr., a member of the West Virginia Army Reserves, owner of a bicycle shop in Morgantown. Last weekend he became the latest victim in the war on terrorism; in a firefight in eastern Afghanistan, Gene Vance was killed. Friends describe him as a quiet, almost shy guy, who never once boasted that he was the recipient of a Bronze Star.

The story of America—the story of free people every where—is the story of quiet men like Gene Vance.

But this Memorial Day is different. For the first time since the Civil War, American have died in war on the mainland of the United States. Gene Vance and the others who have died in Afghanistan, were preceded in death by business people and firemen, by police officers and accountants who went to work or got on a plane on a Tuesday morning and who never came home. 3,000 quiet people like Sargent Vance.

Whenever freedom is won, it usually leaves behind full graveyards and empty arms. Freedom means to fight and sometimes die.

We who are followers of Jesus Christ are in a difficult position. In a sense, we live between two worlds: this world, and all its fallenness, and the reality of being citizens of heaven. We in America and blessed by a remarkable Christian heritage. In a sense, that makes our task as citizens all the more difficult. If we were in pagan Rome, the lines would be clear and simple. But we are citizens of a country that has honored God, however imperfectly. As I urged you a month ago, just before the National Day of Prayer, an "America first" nationalism is not a worthy motive of a Christian in America. Justice is our aspiration. Justice is higher than any national interest.

We love this nation because we have seen the hand of God upon it. In the 20th God used America to save the world from both fascism and communism. Perhaps for such a time as this, God again has raised up the nation with the historical burden of defeating the Islamo-fascism of the Al Qaeda and its allies.

Some Reflections…

But today, we remember. We remember all who have fallen, from Bunker Hill to Anteitam, from the Ardanne woods to Normandy, from the Chosen to Da Nang, from Desert Storm to Tora Bora, as well as the victims of September 11. We still grieve. These were lives too short, cut short by the enemies of good.

A time of loss…

There was a time, long ago, when the enemy of Israel, the Philistines inflicted a terrible defeat upon Israel. We read of it in the last three verses of 1 Samuel, 1 Samuel 31:11-13:

11When the people of Jabesh Gilead heard of what the Philistines had done to Saul,

Saul was Israel’s first king. He managed his role as king so poorly and with so little regard for the law of God that the prophet Samuel told him that God would take his rule from him and give it to another—to David. But he did start well. One of his first acts as king was to rescue the people of Jabesh Gilead, as city on the side of the Jordan River held captive by the Ammonites.

1 Samuel 11 records his victory. Nahash the Ammonite had the city under siege. He offered to spare their lives if each man submitted to having his right eye gouged out—some deal! Saul and his army came their defense, and attacked the Ammonites in the middle of the night and rescued the city.

This was an act of valor and deliverance that the people of Jabesh Gilead did not forget. So these 40 years later, with Saul dead and the nation in crisis, they remembered.

Not only did the Philistines defeat Saul, and he had fallen in the midst of battle, but read what they did after he was dead, in vs. 8-10:

8 The next day, when the Philistines came to strip the dead, they found Saul and his three sons fallen on Mount Gilboa. 9 They cut off his head and stripped off his armor, and they sent messengers throughout the land of the Philistines to proclaim the news in the temple of their idols and among their people. 10 They put his armor in the temple of the Ashtoreths and fastened his body to the wall of Beth Shan.

Shades of Daniel Pearl: decapitated for no other reason than his ancestry. They desecrated his body. This spring I read the book Black Hawk Down; maybe some of you have seen the movie. Perhaps you remember what the mobs of Mogadishu did to the body of Staff Sargent Bill Cleveland, dragging his naked corpse through the dusty streets of Somalia.

This was the kind of indignity that the Philistines inflicted on the bodies of Saul and his three sons. Decapitated, stripped, and pinned to the wall like a butterfly. These pagans were barbaric.

A time to act…

In the face of barbarism, some fear and cower into submission. But wherever there are free hearts, there is a courage to stand up to the evil ones even in the face of great loss. We see it in what the men of Jabesh Gilead did next:

12…all their valiant men journeyed through the night to Beth Shan. They took down the bodies of Saul and his sons from the wall of Beth Shan and went to Jabesh, where they burned them. 13Then they took their bones and buried them under a tamarisk tree at Jabesh,

The Hebrew indicates that the "valiant men" were men of special courage and skill. Special Operations types, who made a daring raid into enemy occupied territory to retrieve the bodies of their fallen king and his sons.

At the same time, I suspect that these "valiant men" were like Gene Vance—ordinary men doing extraordinary things in extreme times.

They traveled to Beth Shan, "The House of the Son" an Israelite town occupied by the Philistines about 15 miles from Jabesh Gilead. To get there, the men of Jabesh had to cross the Jordan River in the middle of the night. We’re not given the details; we can only imagine the heroism involved in their effort to "leave no man behind."

And when they brought the bodies back to Jabesh, they burned them and buried what was left, the bone and the ash, under a Tamarisk tree. Cremation has not been a part of Jewish custom due to reverence of the human body, as created in the image of God. They had no assurances that the victorious Philistines would not come to Jabesh, so they did this to prevent further acts of humiliation against these bodies.

You see, the Philistines truly threatened Israel with destruction. Even as today modern Israel has millions of enemies, even as our own nation has millions of enemies, so then the very existence of Israel hung in the balance.

We are a people who are not used to war. Despite the propaganda against the United States in many places in the world, we have always been reluctant warriors. Further, protected by two great oceans, we have not seen blood shed in war on our mainland since the Civil War. All that of course changed one Tuesday morning.

Remember the shock and the mourning and the anger you felt last September. There is a sense in which you ought never get over it. Now we are told to expect more, to expect suicide bombers in our malls or bomb blasts against apartment complexes. What damage—human and psychological—could some modern Philistine do on a Saturday afternoon at Universal City Walk?

In the face of such slaughter and danger and death and loss of life, what did the people of Jabesh Gilead, over 3000 years ago, do? Look at the very end of verse 13:

A time to seek God…

…and they fasted seven days.

1 and 2 Samuel were originally one book. Hundreds of years after these events, and hundreds of years after these words were first penned, the book was divided into a two-volume work (probably because it was a bit long to fit on one scroll.) When it was so divided, these words became the last words of the first scroll. As Derek Prince, in his great little book Shaping History through Prayer and Fasting says, these people in seven days of prayer, turned the tide of history. These were people who fasted for seven days. Seven days when they still had to make meals and tend to the animals and till the soil. They were ordinary, nameless people whom God raised up.

The fast was an expression of mourning. Today when a Jewish family loses a loved one they are said to be "sitting shivah", that is to observe seven days of mourning. For seven days, people sit on the floor or on low stools; they stay at home; they pray; they do not shave or have their hair cut.

But I think we miss the significance of this fast if we think that it’s all about mourning. Fasting in the Bible is always linked to prayer; it is never practiced apart from prayer. For seven days the people of Jabesh Gilead prayed, and their prayers were the human turning of the key in God’s lock that changed history.

The application to us today is obvious. This weekend, we remember, as they did. We mourn, as they did. But do we pray as they did? Do we call out to God as they did? That makes all the difference.

This Memorial Day is our opportunity to take stock, and to remember and yes, to grieve the loss. But it must be more than that, especially this year. If we as followers of Christ are to learn from recent events and from God’s word, then we must incorporate the kind of pattern seen in God’s word here into our way of thinking, living and praying. I think implied to us here are certain action step.


Some action steps

1. Remember: Do not forget. Do not allow the absence of emergency to lull us into complacency. Remember what happened; don’t turn away.
2. Mourn: Grieve the loss of the 3000; the loss of good men like Gene Vance; the murder of a man like Daniel Pearl.
3. Act: Do those things that aim for justice. If called upon to fight, then fight. At a time like this, we have all been called to duty as the enemies of justice seek to bring the battle among us. We are all involved with an enemy that sees no difference between soldiers and children.
4. Be determined: As citizens of both America and of heaven, set your face like flint for the long haul. This war may be like the Cold War, a generation long (although I suspect that the main action will be all in the next five year). Be resolute. Stand firm. Remind yourself and others that we live in a time of danger and war, and be reminded that in the fight for right, God is not neutral.
5. Fast and pray: Like the people Jabesh. Especially pray! And pray with the intention that God will use your prayers to change history.

© Copyright 2002, Pastor Glenn Layne, www.templecitybaptist.org